Curse

Fire Childe · Feb 19, 2008, 07:30 PM // 19:30

Dont worry about 'tactics'? Balanced is more 'complex'?

Come on people, its not hard to play some balanced variant and its not hard to play split. The hard part is judging when it is appropriate to split and in what proportion; when to fight and when not to fight; when to push for the flag stand; etc etc. The hardest part of all is dealing with the backlash when you make a judgment call and its the wrong one because your team will be on the backfoot. The hard decisions you learn the hard way through playing the game and losing and figuring out why you lost. In turn you begin to learn what you can and cannot get away with so I wouldn't worry about this since it will come to you gradually with time.

gvg gameplay however has many aspects that allow you to create opportunities and advantages for your own team and create disadvantages for the enemy team. Any sensible team will try to make their life easier by not letting the other team get morale boosts all the time for example. To do that, you need to know where the flag is (always in your base) and you need to keep bringing the flag to the stand in order to prevent the enemy from keeping it for 2 minutes. Most teams have a dedicated runner to do this and they will spend alot of time running back and forth as opposed to fighting. At the same time you want to try to hold the stand for 2 minutes so you can get a morale boost.

If you want to play gvg you need to know the object of the game. The object of the game is to kill the enemy team's Guild Lord. It is much much easier to do this if you can control the flag stand (and thus morale) and much much easier if you have the npc advantage (because it makes you harder to gank and gives you more firepower and a huge damage boost at VoD).

If you are on maps with a guild thief, you need to know that you can click on the thief and get him to follow you and you need to know that you can use the thief to get inside the enemy team's base when the gates are shut.

You need to know that not all maps have guild thieves. You need to know that (for example) on Warrior Isle there is a trebuchet and a repair kit and you can use the repair kit on the trebuchet to fix it. You need to know that you can click on it and fire it at the nearest base killing everything standing in the courtyard. You need to know that this can be done to you so don't have your entire team standing in the courtyard with enemy players at the front gates. Yes my entire team has been squished in this way before. Yes it was embarassing. Yes we could have won if we werent muppets.

You need to know that flag capping has a spanner thrown in the works on maps like Isle of the Dead which surrounds the flag stand with this swamp like gloop that slows you down.

Everyone getting into gvg needs to know this information because it is relevant no matter what team build you play. You won't be able to take it all in at a moments notice. It takes time and you need to get a feel for it yourself by playing it. But the idea of trying to win at gvg without knowledge of the above seems crazy to me. So I think it is very poor form to tell someone new to gvg to ignore the tactics and ignore the things that can make life easier for you and harder for the opposing team.

All of this is easy to convey over ventrillo and the one thing I must absolutely stress is that you will always suck at gvg unless all of your team are in vent, all members have working microphones and you all communicate with each other when something important happens.

Pertinent information that your team would really like to know (paraphrased of course):

'Theres a dude in our base killing all our npcs - what are we going to do about it?'

'I'm a monk and I'm low on energy. Kiss goodbye to Aegis for a while.'

'I'm a warrior and I have blind, blurred and faintheartedness on me. I can't hit s***.'

'Theres a 6 man gank team heading for our base, they have a huge dmg boost from ViO - we need more dudes back at the guild lord'

'I'm a flag runner and I accidentally dropped the flag because I used an item spell and I'm trying to capture the stand with an urn full of some dead guy's ashes.'

Byron · Feb 21, 2008, 03:28 PM // 15:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fire Childe

Dont worry about 'tactics'? Balanced is more 'complex'?

Come on people, its not hard to play some balanced variant and its not hard to play split.

I don't know what your measure of success is, but a new guild playing balanced in this ladder will not do well. New players cannot understand all the aspects of balanced play (eg, reactive splitting) and certainly won't understand things like shutdown, NPC management, positioning... all of which are vital to a balanced build's success. Not to mention it takes half decent monks to even stay alive (unless you are running uber defenseweb).

It took me almost a year before I could play well enough to get by in a solid balanced build. New players will not have any fun trying to force themselves into one. After the players have some experience with GvG play, then they should think about practicing a balanced build, imho.

Elrodien · Feb 21, 2008, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fire Childe

'I'm a flag runner and I accidentally dropped the flag because I used an item spell and I'm trying to capture the stand with an urn full of some dead guy's ashes.'

That happened to you too?